Those Zany Activists

It started out as a pretty funny hit-and-run video of direct action .  A cross-section of anti-poverty-anti-hunger activists stormed the office of US Representative Paul Ryan on Tuesday, December 10 to insist on a budget for the poor, homeless and hungry to be funded by a 50% cut in military spending. This was the day of the less-than-historic announcement of a bi-partisan budget deal by Ryan and Senator Patty Murray. The hand-held camera followed demonstrator Cheri Honkola as she invited her train of fellow travelers into the office: “Come on in everyone.  Come on in, everyone.”  A staffer quickly approached and pointed out “We don’t allow any photography … ” and another  “no, we don’t have room… we don’t have room … we can meet outside, we can meet outside please” as the unscheduled visit deteriorated into a spectacle of cat-herding.  The scene was apparently repeated with another crew at Murray’s office.

I certainly recognized two of the participants in the activities of that day - Cheri Honkola and Jill Stein.  Honkola is achieving mythic proportions in a long career.  If you have to pick a date it all started, it must have been about 24 years ago - that’s using the math from the best origins story about her when she and her 9-year old son were freezing out on the street.  Summarized in Wikipedia:

After living in an apartment in Minnesota, Honkala and her young son were forced to move out and live out of their white Camaro. She and her son became homeless after the Camaro was demolished by a drunk driver. Honkala could not find a shelter that would allow them to remain together that winter. To stay together and keep from freezing, Honkala decided to move into an abandoned Housing and Urban Development (HUD) home. She would later comment, "I chose to live, and I chose to keep my son alive." She called a press conference, in which she said, according to her, "This is me, this is my nine-year-old son, and we're not leaving until somebody can tell us where we can live and not freeze to death."

This has become a pretty reliable tactical model.  Philadelphia has tens of thousands of vacant properties - many or most of which are owned by the city.  Cheri guides homeless clients on how to takeover carefully targeted individual properties, how to navigate vagaries in the law and employ the harsh glare of public opinion to successfully settle-in these pioneer families as squatters.

Cheri’s bonafides are many and varied.  She is co-founder of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union;  co-founder of “P-perk”, Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign.   I’ve heard that Cheri’s enterprises don’t bother to apply for non-profit status because the gray-area legality of some of her modes of operation might pose a sticking point in the application process or hinder their organization’s effectiveness.  Cheri has run for Sheriff on a platform of not carrying out evictions.  During the last presidential campaign, Cheri was vice presidential candidate for the Green Party on the ticket with Jill Stein as candidate for President.  Apparently Cheri has spoken to UN delegates about poverty.  According to the Philadelphia Weekly she has been arrested over 200 times - usually being released within hours.  (Another source said she’s only ever been convicted three times, but that was by 1999.)

Other documented perps of the action are listed by opednews (first link):  

At a press conference before the office visits, speakers representing a Budget for People, Peace and the planet spoke to the media. Speakers at the news conference included the following: Jill Stein, Green Shadow Cabinet; Cheri Honkala, Liz Ortiz, and Glen Davis of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign; David Swanson, Roots Action; Mark Dunlea, Hunger Action Network of New York State; Dr. David Schwartzman, Professor Emeritus Howard University and community activist.

Why do these adults participate in these self-indulgent and theatrical charades?  Again, I think opednews sums it up just fine, this from the narration of the video:

Now, because this broad coalition included over a hundred peace, anti-hunger, anti-poverty, environmental and community groups it is almost universally ignored within the walls of Congress.

A record to examine

Governor Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania is running for re-election. With his impressive record, he has left a considerable footprint on the landscape of Pennsylvania.  It is worth a second look to fully appreciate the width and depth of that record.

The governor cut more than a billion dollars from education statewide in three years resulting in the elimination of 20,000 public school positions.  In Philadelphia, the cuts in state funding created a $304 million hole in the school budget that was partially addressed by closing 23 schools. Some of the funding has been withheld by Corbett in a deliberate hostage-taking ploy to wrest $103 million in concessions from the Philadelphia teachers union. Of the funding crisis in Philadelphia schools, Aaron Kase of Salon sums up “The pattern has become clear: defund the schools, precipitate a crisis and use that as an excuse to further attack the schools, pushing them closer and closer to a point of no return.”  Corbett is a consistent fan of public school “reform” that would drain funds from the public schools (vouchers) and open them up to private contractors (charter schools, tax credits).

Corbett eliminated state subsidized health insurance coverage for more than 40,000 low-income working adults. He is presently promoting a plan which would reject a mostly federally funded expansion of Medicaid and have 500,000 poorer Pennsylvanians participate instead in a plan paying co-payments and premiums to private insurers. His plan to close 26 of 60 state health centers  across Pennsylvania is being challenged in a suit brought by SEIU.  All of this activity is in addition to the 90,000 children who were removed from Medicare coverage by Corbett.

Eating became problematic for poor Pennsylvanians in 2012.  As reported in Philadelphia City Paper:

Republican Gov. Tom Corbett has announced a major assault on the food stamp program that feeds 1.8 million Pennsylvanians, including 439,245 in Philadelphia. Pennsylvania's Department of Public Welfare announced that on May 1, people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets will be barred from receiving food stamps. People over 60 would have a $3,250 cap.

The bar to owning assets means poor people will have to choose between, say, eating or buying medicine - this at a time when the social safety net is being shredded from every direction.  Susie Madrak of Crooks and Liars points out:

Eliminating “waste, fraud and abuse” is an old and recurrent refrain from those who seek to dismantle the country's social welfare system. But it's a cynical ruse: 30 percent of those eligible for food stamps in Pennsylvania don't receive them. According to federal data, the Inquirer notes, Pennsylvania has a fraud rate of just one-tenth of 1 percent.

There is not only coal in that Santa’s bag this Christmas season.  There’s natural gas - or at least hundreds of millions of dollars of tax breaks to the corporations who are frakking that Pennsylvania landscape for petroleum products. Other goodies for the industry include using public funds to create domestic markets and export opportunities for gas, or tax incentives for a Brazilian plastics manufacturer.

I dunno.  I kinda hope he loses.

Portland Non-profits

We are distracted and amazed by the relentless campaigns to silence, disenfranchise, impoverish or marginalize most of us to assure the lavish comfort and gated security of a precious few of us.  But there are other stories out there.  Portland, Oregon is probably unremarkable in its active, mostly invisible, community of non-profit organizations of people who are trying to help.

The Southwest Community Health Center, in their own words, is a safety-net-clinic providing basic health care to low-income uninsured individuals. They solicit donations.  They write grants.  An anonymous donor recently provided a matching challenge grant of $20000.  Last year, SWCHC provided 1711 patient visits to 812 unduplicated uninsured individuals.  You don’t have to scratch very deep to understand their effect on people’s lives.  Here is an on-line review from a client:

I've been living the under-payed uninsured lifestyle basically, since, forever. I had OHP or private insurance through my mom for periods of time as a child, but once I turned 18 was SOL (hopefully the new reforms about keeping dependent adult-children on family plans will stick around). 

For people like me, the Coalition Clinics are life-savers. SWCHC is a part of the Coalition Clinic Network. They provide medical treatment to people who don't have money or health insurance to see a regular doctor and need to manage chronic or even acute health problems. It can take a few weeks to get an appointment, but if you do, it's a blessing. They take payment on a sliding scale, and if you make under $800 a month they only ask for $5. I've been examined after injuries, had a physical and got an order for routine blood work (which is covered when they refer you) to manage a few health concerns I needed to keep on top of.

The clinic is staffed by volunteer doctors and medical interns from all the local medical groups (like OHSU, Providence, etc). Your doctor will vary from visit to visit. Services that are provided can vary based on what group is volunteering that month. I saw a few different doctors while I was going here, and each of them were friendly, professional and, most of all, compassionate.

Ethos Music Center was conceived in response to relentless cuts over the years to music and arts education in Oregon.  The vision is hardly revolutionary – per Wikipedia, the Greeks used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. Ethos is a startlingly effective non-profit founded in 1998. They are headquartered in an underserved area of Portland targeted by other non-profits as well.  Ethos is all about making music lessons accessible and they are available in a multiplicity of configurations – private, group, full-priced (low), on a sliding-scale, subsidized by scholarship or, in the public schools but paid for by AmeriCorps; formats comprise “music lessons, multicultural performances and workshops to more than 7,000 students a year” for many on free or reduced price lunches.

In addition to its Urban Outreach Program there is the Ethos Rural Outreach Program.  For example, through Ethos outreach, the tiny communities of Metolious, Madras and Warm Springs in Central Oregon each have a whole fte, college-trained music teacher in their elementary schools.  The individual districts have no budgets for music.  The programs are supported through a miracle patchwork of federal programs, grants and community in-kind participation.

It’s nice to know that human nature can force a dandelion through the cracks no matter how thick the layers of asphalt.